


Animal

by irisdouglasiana



Series: The gods will always smile on brave women [1]
Category: Vikings (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-07
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-09-13 09:48:38
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 558
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16890252
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/irisdouglasiana/pseuds/irisdouglasiana
Summary: You slide into men’s dreams and split them open.





	Animal

**Author's Note:**

> CW: brief but non-graphic descriptions of abuse and rape.

You were never one of them, not really. They were never going to love you. Oh, on a warm summer day, no one could deny you were beautiful, stretched out underneath the trees with daisies braided into your hair. Even in the kitchen at the end of the evening with sweat on your forehead and your arms aching and sore from scrubbing pots, you were still beautiful. They saw you and of course they wanted you. They wanted your smiles and caresses, they wanted the softness of your curves and the warmth of your body. They wanted you pliant and fuckable and _easy_.

But you? You were never supposed to want anything at all. You were there to prop up other peoples’ desires and dreams, not your own. So maybe you were a fool to want to be queen. Maybe you were a fool when you handled Aslaug’s soft furs and silver earrings and imagined yourself wearing them. You thought you could be someone important. On your wedding day, you could not stop yourself from twisting the ring on your finger and admiring the dull shine of the gold. They take it from you, eventually, just like they take everything else, but you could not have known it back then.

Here are the things they’ve done to you, and the things they want to do to you: enslave you, choke you, cut out your tongue, chain you to a wall, put you with the pigs, abandon you, humiliate you, beat you, take your bruised body and use you over and over again and laugh at your cries. (After a while, you can no longer be sure which ones really happened—none of them? All of them? Does it matter?). _I am not an animal_ , you tell them, and they shrug their shoulders. They say you brought this on yourself and this is only what you deserve. Worse, they grin and say you wanted it, you liked it, you begged them for more.

And still, to their surprise, you refuse to disappear. Your heart stubbornly keeps beating in your chest. You cannot stop yourself from speaking. They say you must be mad, but you know the truth; the world is mad and they cannot see it.

You slide into men’s dreams and split them open: a phantom wandering the streets of Kattegat, madwoman with a knife in hand, oozing effortlessly through the crack under the door and into the bed of a king—see how powerful you’ve become! Once, he came to your bed and his arms gripped you like steel and you could not keep from trembling; now he wakes up gasping and afraid. A slip of a girl, and yet in the end it takes three men to murder you and haul your body away. No funeral, nobody to weep for you, nothing to ease your passage from one world to the next. For dead warriors, there are days of songs and the promise of Valhalla. For murdered ex-slaves, there is a hole in the earth, quickly forgotten. In a few years, no one will think of you anymore. Maybe from time to time they will hear your sigh when the wind blows, or catch a glimpse of your shadow on the wall. _That girl, do you remember…? What was her name?_

Margrethe. Your name was Margrethe.


End file.
